Saturday, March 28, 2009

Camera Critters: Boreal Chickadee

For many people, birding consists of putting up some feeders in the back yard and then watching to see what comes to visit. This is a great way to see a lot of birds with out having to venture too far. Up here in Minnesota common visitors to feeders include cardinals, juncos, sparrows and chickadees. The typical type of chickadee that we see here are the black capped, however if you want to get a bit more adventurous in your birding you can head up to northern Minnesota in the dead of winter in search of the boreal chickadee.

Boreal chickadees look similar to black capped, except that their cap is brown instead of black, which makes them a bit difficult to spot especially when they mix in with black caps.

Northern Minnesota is one of the few places in the continental US that you might have a chance to see these birds. They typically spend all of their time up in the boreal forests of Canada and Alaska but during the winter, when their is less food available, they will cross into the most northern reaches of the US, which includes northern Minnesota. These pictures where all taken up in the Sax Zim Bog area back in January (1-10)

The problem is that a big part of their diet comes from insects, which are not very abundant during the winter time up in Canada and Alaska. They compensate for this lack of food during the winter by cache food during the warmer months. They supplement this cached food with pine cone seeds but in year where the pines produce less cones those birds that do not have enough food cached will head south in search of sustenance.

I only thought there was one kind of chickadee! These are similar to the ones I know (the black capped?), but the colouring is softer! I love the way you have gotten so close that we can see the texture of the feathers, especially on the first photo!